Nighty-Night

Week 2 of our Summer Reading Program featured Pajamas and a Bedtime theme.  I set the stage by wearing a pajama shirt and some wonderful cow slippers that my coworker had brought in.  Needless to say it did not take the kids long to guess our theme.

All of our books for story time this week were relatively new.  I like using new books in story time, especially for a theme like bedtime that gets played out a lot.  Of course there are lots of great stand by books and I always have those on hand in case, but it is fun to highlight new items to the collection.

The first book we read was My dad is big and strong but : a bedtime story by Coralie Saudo.  I ran across this book on the new shelf just last week and I knew I had to use it for story time.  It was probably more for the parents, but it is a cute book.  Dad does not want to go to bed.  His son has to beg, plead, and cajole him into bed.  Dad plays all the tricks that kids use to delay bed time and tests his son's patience.  The illustrations are a little more subdues than I tend to use.  There are lots of neutral colors with pencil drawings and some black and white detail, but the book is big, so they are not hard for the kids to see.

Our second book was Anne Margaret Lewis' Fly blanky fly!  This is an adorable book about the adventures of Sam and his blanky.  One night he tosses blanky from the top of the steps, and off they fly, zooming through the air like a rocket.  Blanky becomes all sorts of things, like a marching camel, a boat, a train, and even swings from the moon before bed.  Before we read this story I passed around the scarves that we use with songs.  As I read the book we made our scarves act like the blanky did and we marched, zoomed, and whooshed them around.

For our final story I did a flannel version of Pete the cat and his four groovy buttons by Eric Litwin.  I was really excited to use this book.  It is not really a bedtime story, but I changed the first part and said that Pete was putting on his favorite pajamas that had four very groovy buttons.  In the story Pete's buttons pop off one by one until the only button he has left is his belly button.  You can see more of my flannel board, along with Pete's buttons that actually pop off here.  The parents and kids really loved this book.  Many recognized Pete right away from his other books and by the end they were singing along with me.

We had a few sleepy songs this week.  Laurie Berkner's Goldfish take naps several times in between teeth brushing, showering, and bike riding.  Oh, and swimming because they are fish!

After reading Fly blanky fly we used the scarves with Johnette Downing's Flitter flutter where we move our scarves around like birds and bugs.

Hap Palmer's Five little monkeys don't sleep because they are too busy jumping, hopping, and spinning on their bed.  But, going outside to jump is just fine and they do that until they are exhausted.

This week's feature film was Mo Willems' Don't let the pigeon stay up late!  The kids LOVED this movie.  There was so much giggling and laughing (and not just from the kids, those parents were laughing too).  Poor pigeon does not want to go to bed, but he is clearly tired.  He tries to stay up, maybe for a hotdog party?  Mo Willems actually narrates this one along with some children who really enjoy telling the Pigeon 'no!'